tell me, have you heard of this "trash the dress" thing the kids are doing now? featured in a new york timespiece on sunday ("is this any way to treat vera wang?"), it goes something like this:

FORGET throwing your wedding dress into a plastic bag and storing it in the attic. Enter the Trash the Dress photo session, in which the bride, post-wedding, jumps back into her gown and puts it through its paces — swimming in it, wearing it on horseback, even burning it — all while her photographer clicks away.

damn it, i agree with gawker ("Or you could sell the dress on Ebay and donate the cash to charity. Bitch.")! i hate agreeing with gawker!

i have a lot of issues with TTD, particularly with TTD as articulated by the site (trashthedress.com) mentioned in the times piece. excepting one or two shots that, i must say, would be at home in vogue (hint: not the ones involving swimming pools, homages to that one love scene in from here to eternity, or apparent dowry death), most of the photos claim to be saying "look, honey, i'll never need this again because i'm so committed to you!" and in fact say "good thing i'm so committed to you, because i'm a megawhore!"

the TTD thing wouldn't have really worked in my case: my dress cost about $300 a full six years before my ninja seamstress and i attacked it, so the vogue-y juxtaposition of ultra-haute fashion and urban decay is out. i also didn't give a damn about tripping all over grass and mucky cobblestones on our actual wedding day, and how do you trash a dress that's already covered with footprints? i'd like to say that the conspicuous consumption is what kills the concept's appeal for me (and it should), but i think it's actually that waiting to rock out until your wedding day's over is sort of...the opposite of punk (though the point confuses me - just look at what it's doing to my grammar). having the best day ever without worrying about your clothes is one thing, and a great thing; the whole "isn't it sexy to ruin something expensive?" is something else entirely.

...or i'm thinking too hard about something that's little more than a way for photographers to squeeze even more money out of gullible wedding clients (i think it's pretty telling that the vast majority of TTD photos are just as trite as land-based, ultrasincere portraits). who can say? ladies, would you trash the dress? gents and lady-partners, how much is it worth to you to have a photo of your bride on fire riding a horse through a bog?

6 comments:

Concurring in part and dissenting in part, concurring in the judgment:

Weddings are obscenely expensive. The dress, particularly so (though I must say that $300 served you exceedingly well). So if you wanta get all arty about it and wear it to a tattoo parlor or a Mets game or on a swim in the East River, be my guest.

But selling it off? That's an idea. A capital idea.

OT: Was at a wedding on Saturday. I am always amazed at the tackiness of [professional] DJ wedding music. There were middle school dances that I went to that had more class. Allowing for the Chicken Dance (a Midwestern thing, I suppose), there was the Electric Slide, YMCA, the Macarena, Sisqo's "Thong," and Clarence Carter's "Strokin'". Consecutively. You want to call me a music snob? Go ahead. That was hellish.

(I must say that the selection of "Don't Stop Believin'," on account of subsequent events, might have been a lucky strike.)

You gonna pay $20,000+ for a room? Go full bore. If you can't find stuff beyond hackeneyed pop and yacht rock, why not play Viennese waltzes all night? You're dressed all classy and stuff. Act like it.

you should have warned me about visiting trashthedress.com at the office: the water shots, even the ones without the snogging, are rather suggestive -- or at least overly reminiscent of the SI swimsuit issue -- if someone happens to glance at your screen! reinforces my reaction that these women are looking for perverse ways to draw attention to themselves as bad girls. (i won't even go into the obvious dirty white dress symbolism.)

so no, i wouldn't trash the dress. even if you're not the "vacuum-seal it and save it for grandchildren" type, there are so many better things to do with a couple-hundred- or -thousand-dollar gown. moreover, destroying the dress for sport (or more likely, vanity) smacks of disrespect for the wedding itself. doesn't it seem like something one would do after a divorce?

i kind of agree with valya that it seems a bit snarky, but i also totally agree with the stupidity of wasting something you've spent money on and (ostensibly) care about. this is why i don't gamble, either.

i guess it does save you any grief about not being able to fit into your wedding dress in 10 years, though.

and p.s., what is it with you, internets in june? it's like a wedding info blitz from here to slate and back again.

i have to agree w/ tom that if you spent all that money on the dress, why not get some more mileage out of it, and if rolling in the mud is your idea of a good time, then heck, go for it.

a more interesting question is, would one trash the dress if there wasn't a photographer around to capture the event?

perhaps there is a satisfaction in trashing an expensive, time-consuming, uncomfortable gown that could be likened to the wistful sort of satisfaction that comes with striking a set after a play ends. sad to see it go, but the act of physically destroying what you built with your own hands so that something else can rise up from the ashes, er sawdust, provides a strange sense of catharsis.

what was more disturbing about the photos on the website was that NOT ALL WOMEN should star in their own suggestive, roll-on-the-beach photo series. there was one in particular who just looked like she was peeing in the ocean and the poofed up dress was providing cover so no one would know what she was up to.